Wishing you a Happy Samhain "End of Summer"

Samhain or (sa:win) is an old Gaelic festival to celebrate the end of summer, now known as Halloween.

As a child this was my favorite holiday, I just loved making a costume and heading out for my yearly sugar rush. Now I head out with my niece and nephews and enjoy their expressions.

Leviathan update:
We are close to production! I am working on the last of the weapon arms... After that I need to make masters of all the molds and then complete the instructions and box art. best guess of release date stands mid to late November.

Why has it taken so long? I think we will top out at 30 to 32 molds, using about seven to seven and a half gallons of mold rubber.

It has been a LOT of work and I'm looking forward to moving on to the next set of Leviathan in the series.

Thought I would share some AMAZING pumpkin carving!

Some nice pics of a painted Siler Tank

I just saw on Miniature Review that Jon over at Khurasan is releasing the heavy tank I worked on a few months back.

I have to say, I think it looks great painted up in desert tan.

I missed this one as well.... Here is a pic of a missile AFV I worked on just before the Siler tank.

SpaceJacker at Tinysoldier painted up the AFV.

It sure is nice to see Jon busy releasing these and I just love to see them painted. With my head buried so far into the Leviathan mold process, I'm lucky to catch any of these ;)

Checking in and Rotunda part 1

Hey guys, long time no post. The shmup is currently underway but I'm waiting on concept/ref art at the moment, so I decided to whip up a quick map for Halo Custom Edition. Thought it would be fun to show you snapshots of it as I work.

To start off, here is a quick ms paint sketch of the level's layout


(Click for full size)

I actually sketched it out in a notebook first, but I don't have access to a scanner.

The map will have three floors, centered around a large pillar, the "bases" and flag spawns will be right next to each other on the second floor, but with a wall separating them forcing players to go around the long way.

Players have several paths they can take to get around the map:

They can jump down to the first floor which offers the shortest path between bases, but is effectively a kill zone offering no cover and plenty of places to be attacked from.

They can take the middle path, above and going around the edge of the first floor, this path is a longer route, but offers more cover and gives you a pretty good advantage over anyone on the first floor.

They can also take the outer path, a long curving hallway around the outside of the map. This is the longest route, but also the safest.

There are one way teleporters near both bases that lead to a small ledge on the third floor which holds a power weapon (Rocket Launcher on Slayer and Oddball, Sniper Rifle on Capture the Flag and King of the Hill)

This is a small sized map which should be great for 4 to 8 players.

I'll be back in a bit with the level blocked out and in game to test the layout.

Here is something I had to keep Hush-Hush about.

When John at Moddler contacted me about working with JBR on a commercial gig, I was very excited about the opportunity and jumped at the chance. My Leviathan molds would need to take a back seat for a bit.


This was a CAD model that JBR and I worked on for a Land Rover commercial. Moddler printed the CAD model and sent it off to an ad agency in NY, Hornet Inc. to have the physical model painted and ultimately used in a stop motion commercial.

Here are a couple of links to the final product....

Land Rover :30sec
Behind the Scenes

This was my first bit of work as a small cog in a big commercial deal. Very exciting and very tight deadlines. I am amazed to see the end results.

 The Model needed to be 100% with all details of the real world vehicle captured, all the way down to working headlights. You cannot see it in this render but even the interior headlight bezels needed to be created.

Here are some shots of the modeling work in progress.

A couple of pics of just some of the printed components.

This represented many hours of work for John Ross and I and flawless execution of the final print from John at Moddler.

Its running right now in Italy and you should see a 40 second spot here in the USA soon....


It was a real pleasure working with John Bear Ross and John Vegher on this collaboration.

Aircraft Carriers

Strange Games reader D. Harbinger sent in this game.  He insists that he has played it with colleagues in the Navy.  There is no shaky mobile phone footage to prove it....but it sounds just mad enough to be real.  Even if it is not real,  surely this is a game that will catch on.
Aircraft Carrier is an almost unbelievably silly and dangerous game that should in no way be encouraged, as playing

World Series of Pong Festival

Andrew Essa, or King Pong to his friends, has written to Strange Games to highlight the marvelous festival of Ping Pong that is currently taking place in London.  The World Series of Pong Festival consists of 64 weekly ping pong nights as part of a 100 day festival - starting on September 20th and going all the way to the final on December the 4th.  It is a fun, two player team event - although

Senji Studios: A wonderful diorama for the Leviathan box art

The wonderful and talented Pat over at Senji Studios made a stunning vignette for the Leviathan box art based on a crude sketch I sent to him. Please pop over to his site to see his process and more photos.

I can only hope my painting skills on the Leviathans can do justice to his stunning work.

The Diorama and box art will display the first two Leviathan models. The Eisenkern Leviathan Mortis and the Commonwealth Leviathan Crusader locked in battle on an Eisenkern held planet. The architecture is of Eisenkern origin with a decidedly gothic feel. The buildings are slab construction, cast off world and shipped to a planet for a “colony in a box” method of quick assembly while retaining the architectural interest and distinct retro-gothic feel of the Eisenkern society.